The Gods of the Glowing Pools
by Koi Lungfish
Summary: G1, preEarth - An alien, Afkwyrt, awaits the coming of the Decepticons.


**Title:** The Gods of the Glowing Pools  
**Author:** Koi Lungfish  
**Disclaimer:** Based on characters and situations from The Transformers (c) 1986 Hasbro, Ltd. Used without permission. Text (c) 2007, Koi Lung Fish Mark of Lung. All Rights Reserved.  
**Subject:** An alien, Afkwyrt, waits for the coming of the Decepticions.  
**Continuity: **G1 cartoon.

Afkwyrt stood near the edge of the high plateau and waited to die.

The elevator that had raised he-it and his-its concept-friends these fifty miles above the clouds was destroyed, its carriage sent tumbling down the sides of the plateau, carving deep scars into the ten-million-year-old black silicate. The monitoring station was a wreck, its atmosphere seals rent wide open, the precious chlorine vented out into the high stratosphere. The radiophonic assembly had been destroyed as they stood staring at the shattered remains of the elevator, leaving only a dripping mess of intelligence-gel and smouldering circuits.

Afkwyrt shifted on his-its eight legs, the steel sheaths covering his-its needle-pointed feet digging into the thin maroon skin that covered the network of ridges that formed the surface of the plateau. Pools of photovoltaic bacterioids filled the gaps in the net, pools of teal-glowing gel. The maroon skin was their work, as was the skeleton of black silicate that they built beneath them, as was the plateau itself. The bacterioid skin was barely as thick as the hearing-bristles on the back of his cranial bulge, but the black silicate was strong enough to resist all but the heavy boring equipment that had been detonated earlier the previous day.

_My domicile-friends are dead,_ Afkwrt thought, rubbing his-its manipulator-palps together in the cold. Before he-it the blue-white sun was beginning to rise, limning the horizon below with a stroke of white fire. The chlorine clouds that surrounded the plateau lit into turbulent fields of yellow and green. The gasbag on Afkwyrt's back inflated in a longing sigh, drawing breathable chlorine from the breathing-tanks on his-its stratosphere suit.

_I will not go beneath the clouds again,_ he-it had said proudly. He-it had left the study-centre where he-it had taught to join the monitoring station here, amongst concept-friends who became domicile-friends who became corpses.

He-it did not turn around, for behind him-it the frozen bodies of Prxmyt and Zyxtyn and Aghmygd lay scattered and torn across the plateau, their stratosphere suits shredded open, their limbs exposed to the terrible cold. Their inner fluids had frozen and their carapaces had exploded. Prxmyt lay in one of bigger glowing pools, the luminous gel slowly dissolving his-her frozen body. The bacterioids would migrate into his-her body, colonising his-her carapace. In five thousand years Prxmyt's corpse would be host to a constellation of glowing gels. In ten thousand years, the maroon skin would form. In fifty thousand years, nothing would remain but a scar of black silicate.

Afkwyrt shuffled his-its palps, shivering at the knees for the death of his-its domicile-friends.

_I will join them shortly,_ he-it thought. There was nobody else left for their saboteur to kill. _My body also will lie on this plateau, frozen and half-digested by bacterioids that evolved in the pre-cellular ooze millions of years before the first shelled creatures formed._ That thought calmed him-it, stilling the flutter of his-its four hearts and the quivering of his-its upper knees. _The bacterioids rose above the world on platforms of their own making, lifted themselves into the skies above the clouds, and left us as if they were ascending gods._

If I believed in gods, I might think this an appropriate place to die, so close to and so conceptually amongst them.

Thoughts of death brought him-it to thoughts of the saboteur, and thoughts of the saboteur brought him-it to thoughts of what approached from beyond the sun.

_Will even the bacterioid gods survive?_

The blue-white sun was half above the horizon, the thickest of its three hydrogen belts visible through the polarised bubble shielding his-its twelve eyes. Three of his-its eyes were blinded, burned in the explosion of the gas-collector horns, covered in a gel-patch whose medicinal properties had expired two days ago. He-it had not dared take his stratosphere suit off to remove it, for there was no one left to help him-it put it back on.

_It makes little difference now._

He-it turned his-its eyes to the sky, the dim thin-air blue high above. A darkness was there, a slice of faintly deeper blue, a tiny dart of a shape.

_They have arrived._

He-it became aware of a darkness at his-its side, an alien blackness that had come upon him-it in utterly silence, not even rippling the pools of bacterioid gel with its footsteps. It was sleek shape, made of steel and angles, black as the silicates, four-legged instead of eight, without gasbag or cranial bulge or eye-nest. It had no feeding palps, no manipulator palps, no extensible tongue-jaw.

"Hello, murderer," Afkwyrt rustled into his-its communicator.

The black shape did not answer. Attached to the front of its blind shoulders was a fifth limb, upon which was what Afkwyrt hypothesised was its equivalent of a cranial bulge. It lifted its sharp limb-face and faced the faint arrow in the sky. Its eyes were only two, and red, and flat. Afkwyrt considered the possibility that it was blind

"For an alien, you seem very uncomplex," Afkwyrt said. He-it wondered if it could speak.

_Is it really a saboteur? Is it not perhaps an alien beast lost by mistake?_

Yet it was intelligent enough to open the atmosphere doors, and to detonate the mini-reactor, and it has killed and killed and killed...

"Tell me, murderer ... tell me why. Or where from. Or how. Or ... anything."

The dark sleekness turned away, ignoring him-it. It swung around soundlessly, the fall of its broad pad-like feet not making a single vibration that Afkwyrt could feel. It stalked away, leaving Afkwyrt alone, murdered by inaction.

In the saboteur's indifference Afkwyrt heard his-its answer.

_You are nothing_, said the silence of the saboteur. _You are mere obstructions to our coming. You will stand aside or die._

A low whistle tickled Afkwyrt's hearing-bristles. One of his-its breathing-tanks was depleted, the other low. In a few minutes it would be empty, and then he-it would have only the chlorine in his-its gasbag to sustain him-it. Afkwyrt calculated he-it had twelve minutes left to live.  
_  
I cannot escape, because the elevator is destroyed._

I cannot signal outside, because the radiophone is destroyed.

I cannot gather more air, because the gas-collector horns are destroyed.

I cannot shelter, because the monitoring station is destroyed.

I cannot speak, because there is no one to hear me.

I cannot scream, because there is no air to scream in.

"Oh murderer," he-it said aloud, shortening his-its lifespan by thirty seconds with each word, "your indifference is a studied cruelty."

Above, the dark dart descended through the pristine sky, the sun shaping it into a great arrowhead of purple, a long cleaving bolt with fins and clustered engines at the rear. It was build like a blade, purposed only to cut without feeling.

_We should not fear the slavering monsters with which our imaginations peopled the stars,_ Afkwyrt thought. _The true alien comes coldly, indifferent to our living and dying, and continues on untouched. We shall fight, and be destroyed, and only the gods of the glowing pools will continue on, as untouched by our destruction as they were by our creation._

**Author's notes & addenda:**   
Feedback always welcomed.


End file.
